Green

#PlasticFreeLyric

The festive Season is over. The Lyric is on a detox. We’re giving up single-use plastic.

Over the course of 4 weeks, we will be undertaking a series of actions based around our desire to give up single-use plastic. In December, we audited our staff, to see where most of their plastic use comes from and across January and February 2018 we’re hoping to make significant changes to our habits, both as individuals and as an organisation.

Week 1: w/c Monday 15 January

Giving up our single-use plastic bottles!

The Bar & Grill will no longer sell single-use water bottles or offer plastic straws, but will instead promote tap water and will also sell reusable bottles to all our audiences. Our staff will be encouraged to use their reusable Lyric water bottles and cut out single-use bottles for the whole of this week.

Week 2: w/c Monday 22 January

Giving up single-use plastic lunch containers!

We will ask all our staff to bring lunches in reusable boxes and to refrain from using plastic, disposable cutlery. We will celebrate our efforts with a Lyric lunch on Friday 26 January 2018.

Week 3: w/c Monday 29 January

Giving up disposable coffee & tea cups and plastic bags!

We will be reminding all staff to bring tea/coffee in reusable containers, and discounted staff drinks will only be available to staff with a reusable cup! Our plastic bag drop off and re-use points will be signposted for staff to use, if needed.

All audiences will get 20% off their hot drink at the Bar & Grill if they use a reusable cup, and eco-cups will be available to purchase at the Bar & Grill.

We will end this campaign with a talk from the University of Exeter academics, who provided the research to Blue Planet around plastic use and its impact on the ocean and marine life. We will also finish with a survey to audit habits and changes in behaviour from both our audiences and staff.

We hope that our green initiatives will encourage staff, acting companies, creative teams, young people, practitioners, partners, audiences and our local community to consider their effects on the environment and how to reduce them. Collectively, we want our campaign to inspire new ways of thinking about the Lyric’s environmental impact, sustainability and wellbeing and help create further long-lasting change to build on our existing achievements.

Previous Green Campaigns: #LyricLent

#LyricLent was an environmental campaign we ran during March and April 2017 in the run up to Easter. Taking the inspiration of Lent, we asked everyone what they could give up to make positive environmental impacts.

Over the course of the campaign we carried out over 50 collective and individual actions along weekly themes including Give Up Waste Week, Focus on Drinks Week, Paperless Week, Powerless Week, Food Focus Week, Air Quality and Travel Week. It all adds up to quite a list! Here goes…

We held an office spring clean recycling reusing or giving away everything we didn’t need any more, supported HammersmithLondon’s Book Day Book Swap in Lyric Square, ran a clothes swap, ran a WEEE (Waste Electrical & Electronic Equipment) Drive, held photocopier switch offs to save energy and paper, switched our neon sign off for Earth Hour, switched to a new stationery supplier Wiles Greenworld who offer a range of carbon free products which are delivered by low carbon vehicles, promoted our provision of tap water to audiences and offered glasses rather than plastics, ordered reusable plastic glasses for audiences to take into our auditorium, gave out new Lyric waterbottles to staff and acting companies, signed up to be a tapwater refilling station here, signed up to a Water Aid pledge to support their work to provide free drinking water to everyone around the world, continued our long-running polar bear switch off campaign, developed a green vegetarian & vegan menu, firmed up plans to grow micro herbs on our roof for use in our kitchen, banned disposable coffee cups and waterbottles in our office for an entire week and voted to ban them permanently from now on, supported our local Hammersmith & Fulham Foodbank by asking staff to donate food items to local people in need, organised a visit from a Transport for London bike mechanic who gave free bike MOTs and bike security marking to our staff to promote safer cycling, our Trustees made our March Board meeting paperless saving an entire ream of paper, our Senior Management Team used a projector instead of printing meeting papers, staff made use of projectors in other meetings to avoid printing, our Head of Administration Andrew visited the RICOH showroom to order an upgrade to a greener photocopier, our partner Liza Monzon from Action on Disability offered free lunchtime meditation sessions to all, we held a green lunch for all staff, our Head of Operations Simon weeded our green sedum roof which increases local biodiversity. Staff committed to giving up a range of things during #LyricLent, including: the use of electric heaters, buying coffee in disposable takeaway cups, taking the Tube, eating pre-prepared supermarket meals, watching screens after 9pm, buying food in excess plastic supermarket packaging, eating junk food and drinking alcohol.

In giving up products and activities we take for granted, we found we were inspired us to take up new things, such as walking or cycling to work, doing more exercise, taking more time to relax and even trying out meditation, finding innovative ways not to use plastic or transport, supporting local community organisations and reducing our carbon emissions!

Cyril Bjorn

Cyril (an anagram of Lyric and Bjorn meaning bear in Scandinavian) the polar bear is the Lyric’s Green mascot. It is Cyril’s job to remind everyone to look after the environment.

He likes to wander around the building and often appears in some of the photos with our cast. So watch out you never know where you’ll see him!